Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"Mexican born artist Guillermo Meza came from very humble beginnings. At a very young age he showed great interest and a deep affinity for the arts. He was schooled at the Escuela Nocturna de Arte para Trabajadores No. 1 (Art Night School for Workers No. 1). In 1940 he was discovered by well-known Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who was so impressed with Meza’s skill, he organized the young artist’s first solo exhibition. Meza has a very distinctive style often using pastels or gouache and bright, vibrant colors to create his works, giving them a very impressionist feel. Both of the works found in Indigenismo & Modernismo are great examples of Meza’s unique style.
Polyphemus shows a dark skinned man is shown sitting in a forest setting. His hair is pulled high onto the crown of his head in a ponytail and has red and white paint on his face and torso in various tribal looking designs. The white rings around his neck and the ridge of small white nodules down his back take on the appearance of bones. This is further enforced by the shape of the painted design on the man’s arm which looks very similar to an arm bone. These chilling adornments cast the indigenous man in the role of the savage.
Meza’s chosen title further explains the man’s character. The shepherd Polyphemus was a Cyclops in Greek mythology best known for his role in Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus and twelve of his men stop at Polyphemus’s island on their long journey back to their home. Polyphemus finds the men in his cave after coming home with his flock and traps them by pushing a giant rock in front of the exit. He proceeds to devour six of the trapped men, having two for each of his meals. He promises Odysseus, who had told the Cyclops his name was “no one,” that he will eat him last making a mockery of the Greek rule of hospitality. Finally the clever Odysseus devises a plan of escape. He and his men sharpen a wooden stake they have found and proceed to get Polyphemus drunk on undiluted wine. Once the Cyclops has fallen asleep the men blind him. Blinded and bleeding, Polyphemus cries out to his fellow Cyclops for help shouting “No one has hurt me! No one has hurt me!” Thinking Polyphemus was making fools of them they refused to come to his aid. The cunning Odysseus and his remaining men finally escape by tying themselves to the undersides of Polyphemus’ sheep and are then lead out to pasture.
By choosing the title Polyphemus, Meza is invoking the view of Mexico’s indigenous people commonly held by their European conquerors. When the Spanish Conquistadors first arrived in the new world they found many native groups who practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. They condemned these practices as being evil and vowed to civilize the people of this new land. The bone designs which cover the native man’s body therefore speak to his savage and cannibalistic nature, which is further reflected in the landscape. The trees writhe within the picture plane as tendrils of vegetation peep through between their branches suggesting that the land itself is also savage. Instead of condemning the man’s savageness, however, Meza celebrates it as the power of indigenous culture. In 1928, the Brazilian Oswald de Andrade had already expressed a similar idea in his Anthropophagy Manifesto, where he proposed cannibalism as a creative model for Latin American artists and poets. Likewise, Meza was part of the “Indigenismo” movement, which advocated a larger and stronger role for native Indians and their customs and traditions in society. He painted the native peoples and characteristics that made them so, because he hoped to reverse the stereotype of the indigenous people being less than the westerners.
Woman Bathing (1950) is also indicative of the artist’s body of work. Painted in his impressionistic style of brushwork and bold colors, it shows a woman bathing up to her shoulders in water. She appears to be of Mayan descent, having the high forehead and oblong shaped head indicative of the Mayan practice of head binding. The woman is shown in a natural setting. The tree roots behind her look like those found in the lush forests of the Yucatan peninsula. In this work Meza shows the beauty of Mexico’s indigenous people and of the indigenous landscape. Unlike earlier artists, who more often than not, portrayed the indigenous people as being lesser beings than the Europeans, Meza depicts them in an empowered, strong, and beautiful light.
Allie Brandt and Lindsey Zachman
"